Monday, 28 July 2014

a gleeful/jungle ave mash up blog tour

I've been having a whole lot of fun this weekend with Sara Lawson's new line for Art Gallery Fabrics. Sara asked me a while ago if I'd like to part of the blog tour for her line, Jungle Ave, and I jumped at the chance. Sara is one of the sweetest people you could ever meet, she's immensely talented, super nice and always looks amazing (she wears the best clothes and she sews them herself, which makes her even cooler in my book).

Jungle Ave is inspired by Sara's home city of Chicago, it's modern and it's cool, and it reminds me of Sara in general. I can totally see her in any one of these prints, or all of the all together in one of her beautiful dresses (with a co-ordinating bag, of course).

I used Jane's block pattern, the nested churn dash, because I needed 8 fabrics and there's 8 fabrics in an Art Gallery Limited Edition Collection. I'd made a block already using Caroline Hulse's Gleeful, and I loved that block so much that I wanted to try it with this too and then I thought I'd mash the blog tours together and have a little party for the two together!

It's a pretty crazy riot of colour. It's even crazier when you add in a block made from gleeful and decide to make a quilt of it, with a scrappy sashing and borders (I'm 3/4 through - it'll be 4 blocks, ad I have made 3...one is still on the floor...with sashing and borders it'll end up a nice big baby size of about 50" or so)....

That gleeful block is a bit creased because someone decided it'd make a good bed. That same someone who is happily resting against a basket of dirty laundry (he's a classy cat)

Anyhow, creases aside, I am loving this riot of colour, and the fact that it clashes like crazy. It's got a good scrappy look to it, which I love and it's been a while since I made something so scrappy (which reminds me of why I love it so much). And it just feels good to sew up something that isn't for work, or for anyone, just for the love of sewing (which is why blog tours are so great for me, I love an excuse to lock myself away for a little while and sew sew sew!)

You can pick up Jungle Ave and Gleeful in all good quilt stores right now (I've linked to Pink Castle Fabrics, because it's all there, just one click away!) I love both of these collections, I love that there's only 8 fabrics in each, which makes it cost effective to buy the whole line, I love the colours in both - they're so sunny and bright and happy. Sara's has a great urban edge to it, Caroline's is just sunshine in a jar. And they both use an amazing emerald green which makes me a happy monkey, because I ADORE emerald green, it's the best of all the greens.